


We Are Asleep Until We Fall In Love

by bowlofsurreal



Series: Beauty Is Mysterious As Well As Terrible [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Canon-Typical Violence, Complicated Relationships, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Porn, Explicit Language, Friendship, Gen, Light Angst, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 11:03:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6608257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowlofsurreal/pseuds/bowlofsurreal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deacon feels like nobody. He's friendly but forgettable. There's nothing left of Deacon but disguises. For some reason, Charmer sees more to him than he sees in himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are Asleep Until We Fall In Love

“With you overloaded and all, let me take this chance to read my unabridged copy of  _ War and Peace _ at you,” Deacon quips. He watches Charmer dig dusty books out of the ruins of a decrepit bookstore.

He spent all these years alone, scouring the wasteland for old reading material. Knowledge kept him company. He learned about things like the IRS and car dealerships, he read about Shakespeare and board games. He loves the old world; the quaintness is like a warm blanket to him. 

“Tolstoy?” Charmer says, digging the heavy junk out of her backpack. She drops a typewriter, two broken circuit boards and four cans of pork ‘n’ beans at his feet. 

Deacon is filled with regret as he shoves the shit on top of the Wakemaster already squishing down his farmhand disguise in his bag. 

“Where the hell would you find room for War and Peace in there?” She nods at his pack. He looks down to see it bursting at the seams, an amorphous form jutting out at all angles, digging into his back. Perfect. 

When he looks back, Charmer's got the biggest shit-eating grin on her face. 

“Did you ever even fucking read _War and Peace_?” She asks, conversational as they make their way towards the exit. 

“No,” he lies, “but I kept it to stand on to reach the top shelf for some sugar bombs. Very effective. 1,200 pages is just tall enough.” 

Charmer buries her chuckle in the bandana she's wrapping around her face. She doesn’t like anyone to see her face so it’s always goggles, bandana, ushanka hat. The right to see the real Rocky is an earned privilege: the hairpin curve of her lips, her button nose, her smooth skin, her perfectly straight teeth. The pre-war dame preserved underneath the grime. 

“Your wastelander disguise is a little heavy-handed,” Deacon assesses. “You look like costume bank robber.” Charmer doesn't even have to turn around to know he's busting her chops. 

“Whatever, Deacon,” she says, rolling her eyes. She reloads the mag in her sidearm before sliding it back into the shoulder holster. With her eyebrows raised in defiance, Charmer continues, “Watch me snatch those sunglasses off your fuckin' face.” 

“Though she be but little she is fierce,” he quotes at her, feigning indignance. 

Deacon invests ten caps in getting Charmer sunglasses just like his. He exclaims “buddy cops!” and pesters her to stand back to back with him in HQ. Dez just rubbed her temples in an utterly exhausted way and grumbled, “can we get back to work?” Ever since they recovered Carrington's prototype from the Switchboard, it's Deacon-and-Charmer at your service. Or Death Bunnies. 

“I like Charmeacon better, fuckin' trademarked,” she replied, stepping into the spotlight. That's cool, Deacon never liked to lead, anyway. 

Deacon and Charmer become partners overnight. 

Deacon’s never had one before, but he's been so invested in this, in her, for so long he'll do anything to get her on side. She's going to be the one to do this; she has to be. He's been banking on her saving the Commonwealth for far longer than he's really known her. Back then, he only could've said it out of hope. Now, he knows Charmer: the clean head shots, silent footsteps; wit and a ludicrous amount of honor. She's the real deal. 

They run ops together. They cook mole rat chunks together. They walk miles, sling shitty pickup lines, and go undercover together—and at this point, they finish each other's snarky remarks; they share clothes, share blankets and bullets and bottles of whiskey. 

But, Deacon doesn't trust her—can't trust her, but that doesn't matter, he needs her. 

Just not in the amorous, intoxicating way he says “I need you” when they're undercover, deep in a lover’s quarrel, making a public showcase the precipice they’re walking: swaying between explosive break-up or explosive make-up sex. So Charmer can swindle some target's pity, armed with a sob story. 

(It is so easy for her to seem vulnerable, caving into her small frame, pleading with her dark eyes like “help me.” And these folks always fall for it, lend a bed or some extra caps. It’s usually an opening for reconnaissance which makes Deacon smile in a way that feels real, but he doesn't know. It almost scares him how she can turn on whatever emotion she needs at precisely the right moment, pulling at heartstrings or lewd animal desire. Almost as much as it scares him how depraved and beautiful that imaginary make-up sex could be.) 

Not in the way he says it when he's down, caught in the gunfire of a raider ambush as they step out of Goodneighbor. He says, “hey, buddy, whenever you got a sec, I need you—” in a lackadaisical tone, sounding forced, spread thin by the exertion. The pain from the gunshot in his side is burning hot. The blood is pounding in his ears, like goddamn, that hurts bad. The world spin out of focus. 

It's then he remembers when he could hold on to a single clip of ammo for weeks, before his kill count doubled, tripled. Before he met Charmer and she took his entire world, all the security in the shadows, and turned it upside down. He wishes it didn't have to be like this, that so many people didn't have to die for the greater good. 

Charmer's on top of him, pulling her bandana down around her neck. Her messy hair whips around in the wind. Before he can even finish his sentence, she jabs the stimpak into his thigh. She's saying, “fuck, man, c'mon,” and she sounds far away. She's clutching him by the bicep, pulling his limp arm over her shoulders to get him to his feet. He's trying to help, but everything feels so heavy. 

“Come on, fucker.” She sounds closer, louder, the blue sky behind her seems brighter. She's coming into focus. 

When Deacon looks up, she's searching his face with real concern. Her mask is down; her eyes are glassy and wet; reflective. He feels the blood rushing back, and the adrenaline makes his limbs buzz. 

“Are you an angel? Is this heaven?” He kids, gawkily clutching his heart with false reverence. 

She drags him to cover behind a collapsed building. The high-end ring of bullets fade and the raiders lose their trail. He's still a little unstable, but he can stand. “Man, you scared the shit out of me,” Charmer in a breath, blinking the trepidation from her eyes away. The worry quickly turns to that affectionate annoyance she wears for him. 

“Totally ruined a perfectly good shirt, too,” he responds, noting the stain of dark blood blossoming on his dirty plaid shirt, soaking his sleeve as he covers his side. Unceremoniously, she lifts up his shirt to inspect the graze wound. 

Deacon can't do anything but be some performative kind of coy. He says, “take a lady to dinner first” but Charmer looks up at him, the look that says “be serious.” He's not totally sure how to do that so he usually interprets it as “shut up.” 

“I've fed you like a king, man,” she mutters, absentmindedly. She presses her fingertips gingerly around the area and Deacon flinches, swearing. Charmer splashes the wound with a can of purified water. “It looks pretty fucking gross, but you'll be fine,” she smiles at him, relieved. 

Still trembling from the blood loss and the stim, Deacon goes to light a cigarette but can't, striking the sputtering flint. 

“You're a mess,” Charmer says, lighting the end of his bent cigarette for him. 

“But I'm your mess, am I right?” Deacon manages a smirk, but Charmer just rolls her eyes. He drags on the cigarette and catches her stupid smile, her perfect teeth, the vault dweller in her shines through. 

A sharp pain shoots through him when he twists the wrong way to climb across the debris, but Deacon's feeling better as they continue, carefully edging around the raider camp where they had just gotten wrecked. The sun is setting, and Charmer is looking for a decent place to go for the night, scanning the map on her Pip-Boy. 

“Time for our slumber party?” Deacon asks. 

“Just dying to braid each other's hair and play Mystery Date?” Charmer throws back with a wicked smile, flicking knobs on her Pip-Boy, casting a green glow across her face. 

“What's Mystery Date?” 

“Silly board game with fake boys and outfits for different occasions,” She adds, “but you’d know something about that,” Charmer jokes, empty of vitriol. 

They head towards some walled up settlement outside Diamond City. It's a small ex-raider base Charmer's set up with a couple of crops and turrets. They walk mostly in silence, careful to not stumble into another problem. Deacon has a lot of time to think, sneaking around behind Charmer, who is crouched down low. He's trying to keep his eyes on where she's going and not on how her ass looks in those leather pants. Tough life Deacon's got, sometimes. 

They stroll into Hangman's Alley as the sunset sky goes gray and purple; the clouds speed by in the wind. It's the same meager amenities as before despite Charmer's best efforts to keep it up. The place gets raided at least once a week, no matter how many turrets they build. Two out of three water pumps broken, and the crops look shriveled compared to the things he's seen her grow elsewhere. They take a back corner nook with two free mattresses and an empty Nuka-Cola vending machine. Charmer makes her rounds to the settlers, solving problems with that altruistic grace about her. She never bitches about the constant influx of concerns and complaints and resources to managed; she keeps charts and maps of settlements with lines connecting them. 

Deacon sits down on a dirty mattress, leaning back against the concrete wall. His side is killing him; searing pain turned heavy ache. He shuts his eyes behind his sunglasses. It hits him right in the heart, like a massive spiritual thud, when he thinks about the look in her eyes, creased at the corners with worry as she poured all herself, all her energy into keeping him awake, saving his life. For some reason Deacon can't figure out, she wants to spend every day and then another enduring his penchant for bad jokes and facial reconstruction. He's not complaining. 

He needs her. He needs her to save the Railroad, hell, save the Commonwealth. She needs him, too, or Deacon likes to think. 

“Did you die while I was fixing the water pump?” Deacon opens his eyes to see Charmer standing over him. Behind her he can see it's started to rain, and the other people around are heading to their quarters for the night. 

“You know, I would've thought you'd put yourself in a more conspicuous position first, for shits and giggles,” Charmer laughs at her stupid joke and flops down on the mattress adjacent to his. “Hell, I expected more from you, Deacon.” 

“I thought about putting on that sequin dress you have me carrying around, but you came and thwarted me.” Deacon sits up a little, grimacing. 

“Wait, let me clean it for real.” Charmer says and before he can even protest like, really, he's okay, she's up and digging a piece of scrapped fabric and a bottle of vodka out of her rucksack. 

Deacon unbuttons and shrugs off his shirt, leaving the bloody cloth on the floor. Charmer takes the cap between her teeth and twists the vodka bottle open. Deacon leans away from the mattress and Charmer does a slow pour over the open wound. The pain strikes his nerves so suddenly he bites his tongue. He clenches his fists to keep from flinching away. “You good?” Charmer asks, looking up at him. The wound feels like it's pulsing. 

“Just peachy, Boss,” Deacon replies through gritted teeth. Charmer hastily rinses it off with purified water and tapes the clean piece of cloth over it; her fingers are cool and soothing against his skin. 

Deacon's gone back on his promise to stop lying so many times people stop asking, even Dez. She can't trust him not to lie when he says he's going to stop lying. She talks about how sick of his shit she is, this closed loop of bullshit but she never cuts him loose. She knows in this crucial time they need all the help and experience they can get. Deacon thinks she also knows what he's always known: his lying has saved the Railroad more times than anyone can count. Keeping people in the dark is part of what keeps them alive. 

 

He lies so freely, so blandly sometimes he forgets how to tell the truth at all. He misremembers what's real and what's fake. He lies about everything from what he ate for breakfast to how many hostiles he snuck past. He lies about what gun he used or what disguise he wore. 

He lies about details but tries not to lie about the big things: what it's all for, how everyone deserves freedom; how the Big Bad Institute can seem righteous (anyone can seem righteous if they believe it), that actions speak louder than words. 

The only thing he doesn't ever lie about is this: you can't trust everyone. 

Charmer never asks him to stop lying or asks him to stop lugging around so many disguises. She never complains about how he doesn't take off his sunglasses even when he sleeps or about always having to take point while Deacon hides in her shadow. She does laugh at his jokes in her sweet, drawn out way. And she collects old books and widgets, excited when she ambles over to show him some book by James Joyce or something called an eyelash curler that Deacon swears looks like a torture device. She acts impressed with his old world knowledge, and it makes Deacon feel good about it. 

After settling down for bed and taking off their armor, Charmer's flipping through a worn copy of the Metamorphosis by Kafka on her mattress. Lately, she reads it out loud to him before they go to sleep. It's missing some pages but Charmer paraphrases the gaps in her god-awfully sweet way, infusing it with her curse words and Charmerisms (as Deacon fondly calls them). 

“So, Grete's like, fuck this. I don't fucking like taking care of this bug man, I want him out. He's ruining the family.” Charmer thumbs the pages, chewing her lip. She scans the next page, “It's sad, you know, Gregor can't help what he is. The impetus isn't his transformation; the world around him and their perception of him changed.” 

Deacon nods and goes, “the world is usually changing way too fast for anyone to keep up. Just a matter of time.” A pause, he adjusts his sunglasses on his face. “What next? A mole rat with radstag antlers? I'm not ready.” 

They both get what it means to have the whole world change in an instant. To have other people see what they want to see in the rubble of their old lives. He knows she tries to draw away from her life pre-war. She lies about her real name, even to all her friends back in Sanctuary. She buries the fact her son is the  orchestrator of everything they're fighting against. And even though he sees the wedding ring on a chain she wears around her neck, she's never once spoken her husband's name. 

But he knows she misses him. He knows because he feels it too, all the time. He knows what it's like when the center of someone's universe is swiftly and brutally taken away. She's sad, darkly sad in a way that's metaphysical. She's mourning a world that's left her behind, just a corruption of what she once knew. It's so subtle behind her sly smiles and quippy phrasing; an untrained eye would never be able to spot it. It's so small, it's infinitesimal, but Deacon picks it up in the little shifts of her eyes, the wringing of her hands, the silent moments in the night because he suppresses the same signs in himself. 

He watches her flirt and bewitch her way through the Commonwealth; he watches her deliberate touches and bedroom eyes. He wants to know where she learned to flirt like that to get what she wants; he's never seen it look so effortless. He’s a little jealous but not sure of what.

She doesn't trust easily, but when she does, her whole heart is exposed and ripe; delicious like fruit, sugary and fresh. She is hungry for love, a romantic wanting in a world without romance. Charmer tries to fill that empty place inside her with little pieces of everyone, but it never fits right. 

Deacon knows what it's like to lose what you love. They just cope with it in different ways. 

“Nice night, huh?” He asks as the rain comes down in sheets; the raindrops are huge and heavy when they hit the ground. They catch the light of the security spotlights in a way that's almost beautiful. “Can't wait to be knee deep in mud tomorrow. Maybe I'll tell Dez we fell into some quicksand and couldn't make it back to HQ. Take a couple of days off for an island vacation.” 

“I never got how you lie to Dez about shit like that all the time, or why she lets you. She's got such serious eyes.” Charmer sits up rigid, waving around a pantomime cigarette between her fingers, her best impression of Desdemona's furrowed brow and narrowed eyes. She laughs, slumping back against the wall. 

Deacon laughs, too and says, “Hey, I might be a professional liar, but we both know you're not exactly Honest Abe either.” It's meant to be jovial, but it doesn't land. Charmer's face twists into anger and confusion for a moment, like a campfire spark, and then nothing. It's in that brief second Deacon knows he messed up, big time, klaxons blaring. How dare he, her body says as it turns away from him, how dare he say that to her, of all people. Deacon's never been on Charmer's bad side but he's seen the results of her stormy anger—and it's not pretty. He hates arguing. Before she even opens her mouth, he contemplates popping a stealthboy and just disappearing into the night; to change his face, change his life, erase another mistake. 

Charmer wears an impeccably neutral expression, capable of hiding her real emotions in the deep space of her dark eyes. People see what she wants them to see, feline eyes that can shift from friendly to severe in just a moment. 

“I don't lie all the fucking time.” She says, sounding out every letter in all. The words come so quickly Deacon's sure she's been sitting on it for god knows how long. "I withhold. I arrange information.” 

Always expect a lawyer to argue the semantics. She doesn't wait for him to respond, “people make their own assumptions.” 

She tucks her messy hair back behind her ears. She's uneasy; it's not obvious but the way her fingers lose their blasé idleness, tracing the edges of her face and then the collar of her leather jacket. The subtleness of the body language isn't lost on Deacon. 

“I don't lie to you,” she continues. It's not a plea. It seems like a fact in her signature candor but, he honestly can't be sure. 

Cue gallows humor Deacon. Now is his chance to deflect, change the subject, spin an opening for her to believe maybe he is honest with her, to get her off his back for a while. But instead he says nothing, he stares hard at the ground in front of him. 

“Aren't you going to fucking say anything?” 

Without the sound of rain hammering the tin roof above them, the weight of silence would be crushing. “I…” He starts, rubbing his bald head. All the things he's thinking can't find their way out his mouth. “I don't know what to say, or how to… uh, be frank or, uh, I guess.” He hates stumbling over his words like this. “I don't like being put on the spot, you know that.” 

If he focuses on the lies, he never has to deal with who he is now. Or who he isn't anymore. Deacon feels like nobody. He's friendly but forgettable. There's nothing left of Deacon but disguises. For some reason, Charmer sees more to him than he sees in himself. 

 

Deacon looks at her from behind his sunglasses; he smooths down the white shirt he's put on. “I don't even know why I lie anymore.” He lies to protect her, to protect himself. He can't stop lying because he can't tell her the truth. He doesn't want his only real friend to discover that he's what's wrong with the Commonwealth, part of the problem. He doesn't deserve her or the Railroad trusting him. His old, shitty heart can't take losing another person he cares about because of his past mistakes. 

Deacon doesn't trust her, but he needs her. 

Charmer lets out a big breath that fills up the space between them. She grabs the bottle of vodka she used to clean his wound and takes a big swig from it. She's lost in her consideration. She offers him a swig and he cautiously takes it. His sinuses burn as he gulps it down. 

“I don't need you to stop lying, Deacon,” Charmer says like she's thought a lot about it. “I just need you here.” 

“I am here, Charmer,” Deacon offers up too quickly. 

“No, man, I mean, here.” She says, louder. She reaches out and takes his hand to set it over her heart, the magnetic feeling in Deacon's stomach swells. “Fucking here, Deacon, you have to be right here. With me.” 

He searches for meaning in her face, but he's still not wholly sure. Her heart is pounding unyieldingly fast and firm against his palm. It takes him a second to realize his is beating in his throat, too, a cacophony of blood pumping. “Of course,” he manages to choke out. It's not smooth, it's not prescripted, he just says it. He doesn't know if Charmer believes it, or if he does. “I'm here, I'm always in your corner.” 

She doesn't look unsatisfied with the answer. She just blinks at him. She rearranges her hand in his, lacing her fingers through his without asking. It's comfortable, but they're moving fast. It's more intimacy than Deacon's managed in a long time. “I'm just tired,” she says. The ferocity in her eyes is dissipating, but she's pulling him closer instead of letting him pull away. She's drawing him in with her spiritual gravity, Deacon feels like he's falling into the a black hole. 

Charmer kicks away her books and lies on her side, leaving a suspiciously Deacon-sized amount of room behind her on the mattress. He thinks about playing dumb but in the pit of his stomach, there's something inside him that wants to touch her, pull her close. So, he slides in beside her and murmurs some joke into her hair, about how she's lucky only one side of his body is out of commission. He carefully wraps his arm around her waist. Charmer takes her body and fits it into every curve of his; her back flush against his chest, his knees tucked into the back of hers. 

She smells like sweat and dirt and gunpowder, but also, a smell Deacon can't place, something that's distinctly Charmer. It's a smell that sticks with him at all times, clings to every set of clothes, every bed they share, phantom whiffs when she's gone. It never leaves him. 

 


End file.
